From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Sep 19 2001 - 13:12:49 MDT
Dan Clemmensen wrote:
>
> John Clark wrote:
>
> > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> Wrote:
> >
> > > The Koran may endorse violence against unbelievers, but it is quite
> > > possible that modern Islam does not.
> >
> > Recent events would seem to cast some doubt over your observation.
>
> "Islam" is approximately as varied as Christianity. Look at
> Falwell versus (say) Martin Luther King. And that's just in
> US protestentism.
>
> >
> > >It is quite possible that mainstream modern-day Islam does not tolerate
> > >violence regardless of what the Koran says
> >
> > Recent events would seem to cast some doubt over your observation.
>
> ditto.
Then why is it that in every country where muslims are only a fraction
of the population, rather than the overwhelming majority, they are one
of the largest, if not the largest creators of violence? One such
exception USED to be the United States, and it can be said that almost
none of those muslims who perpetrate violence here were born here, or
are even citizens. But, for example, in my local area, four of the six
murders that have occured in Hanover in the last 20 years were committed
by muslims. How can there NOT be stereotypes that result?
Granted, in many areas, the cause is anti-muslim prejudice. Bosnia is a
significant example of this. However, the situations in Kosovo and
Macedonia seem to be as much the result of the infiltration of armed
muslim guerrillas from out of the country with an intent on creating
strife. In the Phillipines, Indonesia, the central asian republics (the
'stans), western china, Chechnya, several european nations and a number
of african nations, there are significant violent muslim movements that
seem to regard violence as the first option to right the wrongs they
perceive themselves to be victims of.
Nor is muslim society a non-violent society. Women are frequently
murdered in muslim society for things as small as what they wear, who
they choose to associate with, or for having premarital sex, and such
murders as seen not as crimes, but as an accepted form of social
regulation.
You will get plenty of people saying that Islam is a religion of peace,
that it does not condone the killing of innocents. But that term is very
slippery. Who is 'innocent'? By muslim society, a girl who has
premarital sex is not innocent. By muslim society, a person who supports
an infidel who fights to be treated equally is not innocent. In muslim
society, there are believers, and there are infidels. Infidels are
second class citizens, and do not have the right to be treated like
believers, though there is lip service to other 'children of the book'
(jews and christians). An infidel who insists on asserting their rights
over those of a believer is automatically wrong.
By muslim law, infidels are not presumed to be innocent until proven
guilty, they are guilty until proven innocent.
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